just a kid with a tape recorder, lost in korea

Hi Everyone,
Sorry for the lack of posts over the past few months. I guess I never made an official announcement, but I’ve actually left Korea and am now in grad school in Chicago. I still have a bunch of sounds that I recorded before I left and hope to post them soon. Time is a bit of an issue, so you might have to wait just a little bit longer. No promises, but I’ll try to get some new ones up once winter break starts in a few weeks. Stay tuned!

P.S. I’d be thrilled to be able to post some more reader submissions from those of you who are still in the land of the morning calm. If you’ve got a recorder and some interesting sounds to share, I’d be happy hear! You can contact me from the link in the sidebar.

An angry gathering outside the hi-tech company building across from our new apartment in Anyang city. Quickly pointing the blame for a sudden late-night power outage, the local residents gathered and demanded answers from the owners of the much-maligned firm. (230 – Angry Villagers)

I want to give one more special thanks to Pavel for his contribution to yesterday’s post. If you haven’t had a listen to it yet, you can find his recording here. This was the first ever community submission for Seoul Sounds, but hopefully it won’t be the last. As I’ve been doing this blog basically alone for the past three years, with the occasional help of my wife or another friend, I’ve realized that there are far too many sounds for one set of ears and one microphone to ever capture. What was once a mission to find a unique interpretation of normal everyday life has began to sound more and more like, well, “normal life” the longer I’ve stayed. I’m still finding great sounds, but it’s just not as easy as it once seemed to be.

That’s where I hope you can come in. To go off what we just started, I’m challenging you, the reader, to help me collect sounds. You don’t need any special abilities or background to do it. All you really need is a set of ears, a way to record (not too difficult in the days of smart phones), and an imagination.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to collect a whole new group of sounds for this page and be able to extend our sound map well beyond what I’m capable of doing myself. Besides, as I will be leaving Korea in the next month (official announcement coming soon), it would be great to keep this thing going after I’ve left. And that won’t be possible without your help!

Anyone and everyone is invited to join, and I’ve even created a “Community Submissions” section in the top menu bar to help navigate to those sounds that were provided by our readers. Feel free to email through the “contact me” link on the bottom right side of the page with questions or to send your recordings. Don’t worry about editing them or anything like that, as I can do that easily before posting anything online.

Thanks for your help! I look forward to hearing what you can come up with.

A special thanks to Seoul Sounds reader Pavel, who provided today’s recording. It’s summer in Korea again, and here is the sound of Seoul’s yearly cicada invasion, as captured along a busy street in Yeoksam-dong. (229 – Gangnam Cicada)

The quintessential sound of a Korean road trip, each and every rest stop on the Korean expressways has a booth with someone selling 트로트 음악 (‘Trot’ music). I can’t say for sure exactly where this was recorded, but I can tell you it was somewhere along the bus route between 강릉 (Gangleung) and 서울 (Seoul). (228 – Highway Rest Stop)